Bus Stops - Not Good Enough?

[Hyphen]

An enviable location - are you sure you are in the U.K.?

I always find it a breath of fresh air when I travel back to Nottingham to see the family. Having been born and bred in "trentbartonland" it's rather difficult now living in an area where First has a near-monopoly, and very very little political oversight to keep them honest. You can't travel west of the city after 18:30 on a Sunday, for example.

No hard evidence for this, but I wouldn't be surprised if figures (somewhere) showed Nottingham had better public transport ridership than all other non-PTE areas outside London. Heck, the PT provision in Nottingham is better than some areas with PTEs (S. Yorkshire, I'm looking at you).

 

[radamfi]

The latest bus patronage figures are available here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/356181/bus0110.xls

Nottingham has the third highest usage after London and Brighton & Hove, but you do have to be very careful when comparing some of the unitary authorities to the traditional shire counties, especially when boundaries are drawn in a particular way. For example, Nottingham often does well (or badly) in various surveys because the local authority (City of Nottingham) only covers the urban core of what most people would think of as Nottingham. Even Trent Bridge and Nottingham Forest football ground are not in Nottingham proper. So it does well in bus usage lists and badly in crime lists. As it happens, most people would agree that Nottingham does have a much better than average service than most other places in England, but the statistics are magnified due to Nottingham's tightly drawn boundaries. Bus usage in the outer areas of 'Nottingham' not covered by the city council may be lower.

Patronage in South Yorkshire is now below the England average.

You would expect Oxford to have high patronage but we can't tell from this table as its data is merged with the rest of Oxfordshire.

 

[Tom B]

It was done fairly well like that at one point, but like you say some of it didn't make sense. One of the worst things if you ask me is that services via the hospital were shifted to C Concourse when they represent a large proportion of passengers, sending them for a long walk and crucially often holding up traffic on the zebra crossing.

But as far as I recall the only integration was within First services, Stagecoach's routes via Bawtry Road were shoved out of the way to B1 and have remained there since, no matter where the 55 (the main service along Bawtry Road) departed from. Also, the fairly frequent changing of stands, and also the fact that each change was a large scale upheaval has led to a number of people avoiding the bus station(me included) as they simply have no idea where the bus leaves from now! Each time stand allocations changed barely any effort was made to inform passengers too.

I do tend to find that any time I am back in Doncaster everything has changed. But again I usually catch the bus home from Baxtergate these days, only go into the North Bus station (!) if I'm going elsewhere.

And, yes, South Yorkshire's public transport has been going downhill for quite some time. Having lived in Edinburgh and London it's quite a shock to go back and realise that many things you simply can't do without a car.

 

[nottinghamcity]

The latest bus patronage figures are available here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/356181/bus0110.xls

Nottingham has the third highest usage after London and Brighton & Hove, but you do have to be very careful when comparing some of the unitary authorities to the traditional shire counties, especially when boundaries are drawn in a particular way. For example, Nottingham often does well (or badly) in various surveys because the local authority (City of Nottingham) only covers the urban core of what most people would think of as Nottingham. Even Trent Bridge and Nottingham Forest football ground are not in Nottingham proper. So it does well in bus usage lists and badly in crime lists. As it happens, most people would agree that Nottingham does have a much better than average service than most other places in England, but the statistics are magnified due to Nottingham's tightly drawn boundaries. Bus usage in the outer areas of 'Nottingham' not covered by the city council may be lower.

Patronage in South Yorkshire is now below the England average.

You would expect Oxford to have high patronage but we can't tell from this table as its data is merged with the rest of Oxfordshire.

There are in fact very few major services which remain entirely within Nottingham city, although oddly a number leave the city authority into a county one and terminate back in the city. The Clifton services going via Trent Bridge pass through Rushcliffe for example. A lot of the arterial routes stay busy into the suburbs like Arnold (gedling BC), Beeston & chiwell (Broxtowe), West Bridgford and beyond (Rushcliffe) plus a lot of TB services are interurban into the county.

 

[g4mby]

Also, in the area of Yate where I live, the withdrawal of the X27 has meant that two stops(one of which has a shelter) are disused for most of the week(save for the N50 service on weekends) whilst passengers now have to wait at a shelter-less stop. I also feel that some of the bus stops on Greenways road could be better positioned.

As the winter and wet weather approaches, may be routes should be diverted to serve stops that have shelters if money can't be found to move the shelters to routes that are currently served.

I suggest that in the case of the X27 in Yate, no-one probably thought that First would want to regain the route from Wessex with a slightly differently routed X46 after they gave up the route in 2010.